The Origin of Man

Lovejoy, C. Owen

doi:10.1126/science.211.4480.341

Cited by 1,269 publications

(449 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…It is well known that there is considerable and often rancorous debate about the nature of locomotion in early hominins: was it like modern humans, like that of chimpanzees, or something in between? It is not the goal of this paper to revisit this debate; the details can be found in the original works [7,26,27,42], in more recent summaries [10,11,21,[43][44][45][46][47] and a myriad of articles in between. With the recent description of Ar.…”

Section: Pelvic Evolution In Early (Non-homo) Homininsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation

Gruss

Schmitt

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

141

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The fossil record of the human pelvis reveals the selective priorities acting on hominin anatomy at different points in our evolutionary history, during which mechanical requirements for locomotion, childbirth and thermoregulation often conflicted. In our earliest upright ancestors, fundamental alterations of the pelvis compared with non-human primates facilitated bipedal walking. Further changes early in hominin evolution produced a platypelloid birth canal in a pelvis that was wide overall, with flaring ilia. This pelvic form was maintained over 3-4 Myr with only moderate changes in response to greater habitat diversity, changes in locomotor behaviour and increases in brain size. It was not until Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and the Middle East 200 000 years ago that the narrow anatomically modern pelvis with a more circular birth canal emerged. This major change appears to reflect selective pressures for further increases in neonatal brain size and for a narrow body shape associated with heat dissipation in warm environments. The advent of the modern birth canal, the shape and alignment of which require fetal rotation during birth, allowed the earliest members of our species to deal obstetrically with increases in encephalization while maintaining a narrow body to meet thermoregulatory demands and enhance locomotor performance.

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Section: Pelvic Evolution In Early (Non-homo) Homininsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation

Gruss

Schmitt

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

141

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“…Evolution from a gorillalike pattern would simply require a quantitative change in the strength of the pairbond, whereas evolution from a chimpanzeelike or bonobolike pattern would require a more substantive and qualitative change in the nature of male-female relationships. If correct, male parenting, long-term female-male relationships, and a family structure following the gorillalike pattern may have been in place since the emergence of our australopithecine ancestors (Lovejoy, 1981).…”

Section: Evolutionary Pressuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that some level of paternal investment is found in most human societies (Geary, 2000), it is almost certain that under some conditions, and at some point in our evolutionary past, men benefited by shifting some portion of reproductive effort from mating to parenting (Lovejoy, 1981). Men's parenting is, nonetheless, puzzling in contexts with low infant and child mortality rates.…”

Section: Physical and Social Well-being Of Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Paternal Investment

Geary

2015

The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

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Male parental investment is unusual in mammals, occurring in less than 5% of species, including humans. The chapter reviews the cost–benefit trade‐offs that likely contributed to the evolution and maintenance of human paternal investment and the proximate mechanisms that influence individual differences in the expression of this investment. The latter include biological (e.g., hormones), social (e.g., quality of the marital relationship), and wider cultural (e.g., rules for polygynous marriages) mechanisms.

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“…Once lone males were replaced by kin-based multimale coalitions, the males and females of these species would likely maintain the preexisting social deep structure -a basic social organization that included one adult male, one or a few adult females, and their offspring, as well as long-term male -female relationships and male parenting (Lovejoy, 1981;Stewart & Harcourt, 1987). The primary difference is that these families would be nested within the larger community rather than being geographically (mountain gorillas) or socially (lowland gorillas) separated.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The same theoretical model and assumptions (e.g., the importance of calories) often guide the study of human parental behavior and family formation in preindustrial societies and the construction of models of their evolution (e.g., Hill & Hurtado, 1996;Lovejoy, 1981;Wrangham, Holland Jones, Laden, Pilbeam, & Conklin-Brittain, 1999). The approach taken in these studies is justified and well founded, as nutritional stress is common in these societies -predatory risks are less common, except from other humansand almost certainly throughout much of hominid evolution (Hill & Hurtado, 1996;Mace, 2000).…”

Section: Dynamics Of Parentingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Human Parental Behavior and the Human Family

Geary¹,

Flinn²

2001

Parenting

100

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SYNOPSISObjective. To develop an evolutionary model that integrates human parenting and family formation with ideas about the evolved functions of distinctive human characteristics, such as concealed ovulation and sophisticated sociocognitive competencies. Design. Theoretical and empirical research across scientific disciplines is reviewed. The emphasis is on ecological and social conditions that covary, across species, with parenting, family formation, and potentially coevolving characteristics, such as a long developmental period. Results. For humans, social competition through coalition formation emerges as the key selective pressure that readily explains the coevolution of a constellation of characteristics that covary with parenting and family formation, including a lengthy developmental period, reduced sexual dimorphism, concealed ovulation, menopause, complex kinship networks, large brains, and sophisticated sociocognitive competencies. Individual and cross-cultural variations in patterns of parenting dynamics and family formation are viewed as adaptive phenotypic responses to different ecological and historical conditions. Conclusions. Human parenting and family formation are features of a coevolving suite of distinctive human characteristics, the evolutionary function of which is to facilitate the formation of kin-based coalitions for competition with other coalitions for resource control. In this view, a central function of human parenting and the human family is to provide a context for the development of sociocompetitive competencies appropriate to the local ecology.

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The Origin of Man

Cited by 1,269 publications

References 57 publications

The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation

The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation

Evolution of Paternal Investment

Evolution of Human Parental Behavior and the Human Family

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